Four social entrepreneurs receive the ILA at The Performance Theatre 2019

Four emerging global leaders of purpose-driven enterprises were awarded the ‘Inspired Leadership Award’ (ILA) at a global conference held at the Intellectual Ventures Lab in Seattle in June 2019.

The awards ceremony is an initiative of The Performance Theatre, an annual meeting of the world’s most influential thinkers, influencers, and doers. The conference provides an intimate, 36-hour space for leaders to learn, explore, reflect, and question accepted wisdom. he event is hosted in a different city each year and this year takes place in Seattle – with the city’s status as a technology industry hub providing an opportunity to explore the broader social questions linked to rapid technological change.

A Global Award

The Inspired Leadership Award recognises bold, purpose-driven leaders who have developed new entrepreneurial approaches to driving positive change at scale. Through a global, public nomination process, the ILA committee, chaired by Jeremy Hillman, Director of Corporate Communications at the World Bank Group, shortlists and chooses candidates. The committee includes distinguished leaders such as Bill Drayton, Chair & CEO, Ashoka; Per Heggenes, CEO, IKEA Foundation; and Archna Vyas, Deputy Director of Communications, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Building a support network for emergent global leaders

ILA nominees connect to mentors and collaborators at The Performance Theatre for inspiration and support to scale their ideas and impact. Previous and current event attendees of The Performance Theatre include Paul Polman, former CEO, Unilever; Ajay Banga, CEO, Mastercard; Felipe Calderón, former President of Mexico; Hans Vestberg, CEO, Verizon Communications, among others.

“I am delighted to recognise four outstanding winners at this year’s Inspired Leadership Awards. By connecting young, emergent global leaders to the unique community of senior leaders that gathers each year for The Performance Theatre, we can help the awardees find new support to scale their impact,” said Jeremy Hillman.

The Awardees

The awardees for the 2019 ILA are founders of organisations and social enterprises around the world – including Kenya, Philippines, India, and the United States – covering various areas such as healthcare insurance, data and governance, social and economic inclusion, and impact investment for minorities. They include:

“As a hub for inventors who want to make world changing impact, Global Good is at the forefront of science for good, and one-of-a-kind in its dedication to catalytic innovation,” said Maurizio Vecchione, Executive Vice President of Global Good and Research at Intellectual Ventures. “It has been a delight to host the Inspired Leadership Awards at the Intellectual Ventures Laboratory and recognise these four innovative entrepreneurs for their personal investments in making the world a better place.”

Past winners of the Inspired Leadership Awards include Arunachalam Muruganantham, a social entrepreneur who invented a low-cost sanitary pad-making machine to change traditional unhygienic practices around menstruation in rural India; Jeremy Heimans, co-founder and CEO of Purpose, a home for building 21st century movements and crowd-based social and economic models to tackle the world’s biggest problems; Dr Nthabiseng Legoete, Founder, QualiHealth, a social enterprise focused on delivering affordable primary healthcare to marginalised communities in South Africa; and Tarek Alsaleh, Founder, Capoeira4Refugees which runs sport, music and play projects in prisons, with Syrian and Iraqi refugees, and in safehouses for women and girls.